Composting fails to catch on
Only one-third of Montreal residents use the city composting service, and the city is keen to increase this to reduce the amount of trash we send to landfill. But some say the actual process is too gross, especially in summertime.
walkerp 10:49 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
I suspect the vast majority of that non-participating two-thirds is more out of ignorance/laziness/passivity/no real motivation to change than actual grossness. What is absolutely bonkers to me is how there is no limit to how much garbage you can throw away. Just make a limit for weekly garbage and then everything else you have to pay for. That would crank up composting use really quickly.
Kate 11:25 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
I know some places do it by weight. When you’re in a suburb and it’s very clear who’s living in each large detached house, that’s not so hard. But in the city, who’s individually responsible for which parts of the pile of garbage each week is never going to be so clear.
walkerp 11:31 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
You just give each address a certain sized bin or bag based on their household size. Anything over that must be in city-approved and marked bags that you have to buy. It won’t be perfect but would still reduce trash volume enormously and put pressure back where it belongs on manufacturers and retailers, forcing them to reduced packaging.
Chris 11:37 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
There can also be unintended consequences, as some people will do things to avoid such a fee. Putting their garbage within the ‘free’ compost/recycling, dumping their garbage into sidewalk garbage bins, or worse, just littering.
DeWolf 11:42 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
In most European cities, there are receptacles on every block where people take their garbage, compost and recycling. This would be a way to charge for garbage (in Venice you need a key fob to open the garbage bin) while also encouraging people to actually sort their recycling.
A lot of people here would probably lose their minds over the change, but I think they’d eventually realize it’s a much more convenient system, because you can take your trash out whenever you want instead of having to stockpile it for collection day.
(Another challenge would be the presence of the receptacles themselves. In most cities they’re just dumpster-type bins, although many are putting them underground with a small opening on the street, like in Amsterdam. In either case, it would concentrate filth instead of having the entire street filled with garbage bags that get ripped open by squirrels and raccoons.)
Meezly 13:06 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
Considering how many places are running out of space for garbage, it makes sense to invest in better composting infrastructures.
Where does city compost go once it’s “done”? Do they give it to farms, public gardens, etc? Imagine if there was a circular system put in place for this to happen!
Tim S. 13:26 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
Having had to purge my fridge twice in 3 months thanks to power failures, I would be happy with more frequent composting, or the block system as DeWolf describes.
jeather 13:47 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
I’m one of the “sorry, it turns gross” people. I don’t know why compost turns gross in a way regular garbage does not if it contains the same composted materials, but I had maggots every week in the summer, and never had them before or after (yes I cleaned the compost bin after pickup). I’d be perfectly happy to compost (garbage, everything) at a receptacle a block away.
I don’t produce a lot of garbage and can’t imagine running out of room but I can think of a lot of ways to get past the “you must use your identified bin” problem, assuming that the city will in fact pick up excess trash and not just leave it on the road to rot.
Blork 14:15 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
I’m trying to imagine how a shared compost bin on every block would not rapidly turn into a festering stinkpot full of rats and other vermin, especially during warm weather.
It’s one thing to imagine such a setup in a genteel boho neighbourhood where everyone is of one mind over such matters, and a well-funded municipal composting system picks up the compost and cleans the bins every day or two. But in the real world of Montreal, how would that ever work? Especially in very mixed or poor neighbourhoods (because really, composting is a middle-class luxury beyond the concerns of people who are struggling just to eat or keep up with their rent).
The last time I lived in a large building we couldn’t even keep the recycling bins — INSIDE THE BUILDING — free of stinking bags of garbage.
How would a neighbourhood compost bin on every block not turn into a stinking health hazard?
walkerp 16:17 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
So garbage mixed with organic matter is fine, but just organic matter is somehow more gross?
Holy shit, people, we are in a climate disaster and you are all trying to find reason why we should keep on accelerating towards that disaster.
Chris 16:39 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
jeather, do you have any land? If so, you could install your own compost bin. If not, you could try vermicomposting. Another option is to put some compost in the freezer until collection day. I’ve done all these. Each has pros/cons, like everything, but each would allow you to divert some out of landfill.
>Holy shit, people, we are in a climate disaster and you are all trying to find reason why we should keep on accelerating towards that disaster.
You may be misreading people’s points here. I read them more as simply pointing out problems to overcome.
Alex 17:24 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
We keep a plastic box with all of the compost in, in the fridge until compost day when we tip it into a compost bag and put It in the brown bin. It keeps well and doesn’t smell at all.
nau 19:33 on 2023-07-16 Permalink
jeather, the likely explanation for why the old style garbage didn’t breed maggots is that the paper products drew water away from the organic materials and the structure of all the materials jumbled together allowed sufficient air flow for enough water to evaporate, leaving the organic material too dry to support maggots.
Tim 09:03 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
My family cooks a lot and we produce at least 4 small bags of compost a week. Raccoons figured out how to open the brown bin from the city last year, so now we store the bags in a locked garbage can during the week. I then transfer the oozing bags of compost to the city brown bin early in the morning on compost day. It is definitely stinky and gross in the summer and I am relieved each week when the city workers take it away.
jeather 09:13 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
But food-stained paper products go in compost anyhow. I’m thinking it might be the kitty litter sweepings? Anyways, as odd as it sounds, regular garbage has never given me maggots, but composting did every week, and though I can live with fruit flies maggots gross me out.
I don’t have land, I don’t have that much freezer room. I’m not unwilling to do composting — it’s certainly no more work to throw my food garbage into a brown bin than a white one — but I’m not willing to have maggots.
Meezly 09:18 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
Further to nau, we always end up with brown paper bags from boulangeries, takeout, etc. and instead of recycling them (since some of it is soiled anyway), we add some to our compost to absorb, add air pockets, etc.
Kate 09:22 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
I do the same, using up the paper bags I get from Lufa. Basically a sort of lasagna of organic scraps between layers of brown paper. Not appetizing but not actively disgusting even in high summer.
MarcG 09:54 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
I have a bucket on the counter next to the sink that I line with a paper towel and then put a compostable bag into. When it’s full I put it in the brown bin which sits outside. In the summer it smells bad in there but I just flip open the lid, chuck the bag in, and close it again, and then on pick-up day I drag it to the curb. After they’ve emptied it and body-slammed it into the concrete sidewalk or drop-kicked it onto the grass (I assume this is how it’s done) there is typically some juice left in the bottom which I pour gently into the gutter, then close it up and put it back on the porch. If there are maggots anywhere in this process I am blissfully unaware. Are people putting their food waste directly into the brown bin and storing it indoors?
jeather 10:11 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
We’re not allowed to keep garbage bins on our balconies, so, yes, indoors. I tried compostable bags, paper bags, no bags; I cleaned the bin. I’m not that big of an idiot.
MarcG 10:16 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
If I couldn’t store it outside of my living space I’m not sure I would compost. I tried vermicomposting indoors many years ago but it turned into a soggy mess and the worms could only eat like 5% of the organic waste I was producing so it didn’t seem worth it.
walkerp 10:34 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
Jeather, these are the kinds of structural problems that are so maddening. It should be the responsibility of your building management to make composting feasible for the tenants. Instead they make stupid rules. The east coast is so wild where landlords have no legal responsibility, don’t seem to even have to keep their buildings clean.
Maybe you can argue that compost is not garbage? A trick for the maggots is that they hate the light, so I just leave the lid open and they disappear (where, I don’t know and I don’t want to know).
Kate 10:41 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
I can manage it because my triplex flat has a front porch and we don’t have any particular rules about what we can put outside, so the brown bin lives there. I would absolutely not keep composting materials inside at room temperature for a week.
MarcG, you’re so right. I’m on my third brown bin, the first two having been destroyed during pickup. I’m one of the two households in my six‑unit building that uses a bin, so I’ve been working my way through the ones left here a couple of years ago.
Orr 11:07 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
We always freeze the compost bag inside a (top cut off) 4 litre vinegar (or windshield-washer) jug. I can fit three of these in my freezer, then the bags go into the brown bin on compost pickup day. Brown bin stays clean and pristine: we’ve ever had a revolting mess to clean up yet. Although on that note, the brown bins should have smooth interiors to make cleaning it a simple easy job, but of course no they are full of little nooks and crannies bc “designers” not actually good at design.
carswell 11:56 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
A friend with a lush rooftop garden recently told me about a Japanese/Korean fermentation-based composting technique called bokashi that he’s using.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokashi_(horticulture)
His setup involves two plastic buckets (5 gallon IIRC), one sitting inside the other. The inside bucket has holes drilled in the bottom; the bottom container has a spigot. Compostable material, which can include meat and broken apart bones, is placed in the inside bucket and inoculated with a starter, which he buys on Amazon, and a little bran. The bucket is sealed and stored in a closet indoors, as it’s reportedly bug-free and odourless except when the lid is removed to add more compostable waste – and then the smell is mild and slightly vinegary (‘kind of like kimchi,” he reports).
After a few weeks, he drains the bottom bucket through the spigot, dilutes it with water and douses his container plants. He says it’s like feeding them growth hormone. The composted solids can also be added to soil. The only downside is a minor one: though the juice isn’t smelly, it does attract flies for the first day or two after being applied to the plants.
The reason the process is odourless is because it’s anaerobic, gives off no gases. The container is tightly sealed, with no venting.
EG 14:00 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
At one of the places I lived, we had to make sure the brown bin was brought back to our backyard soon after it was emptied by the city, or else random people walking by would throw bags of dog poop in there.
MarcG 14:59 on 2023-07-17 Permalink
EG: That happens to me. Classic Montreal to treat any receptacle as a trash bin.